


Trickster Apocalypse!

by mitspeiler



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Horror, Candy, Come Little Children - Freeform, Gen, Hocus Pocus - Freeform, Invasion, Murder, Tricksters, Villainy, all of them - Freeform, all the references, most foul, the faculty - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 23:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strike>In which mitspeiler always forgets to write a summary.</strike><br/>When Aradia dies mysteriously, a small town finds itself under the malicious, twinkly gaze of the Trickster menace.  What are they?  Where do they come from?  What do they want? And why the hell are they so damn gaudy?  Terezi and Dave must find the answers as one by one, their friends are taken by the mysterious, fabulous plague.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trickster Apocalypse!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rezi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rezi/gifts).



            Aradia had become increasingly cold and detached in the days leading up to her death.  “I hear footsteps inching closer every night when I’m asleep,” she told her boyfriend Sollux, pressing herself close to his chest.

            Trying to be light-hearted, quite contrary to his natural extreme cynicism, he said “fucking cats.”  That was the last time she smiled before she died.

            No one was quite sure of what killed Aradia though Sollux was convinced it was murder, but no one believed him.  People tend to ignore angry boys off their bipolar medication screaming about how ‘she could hear footsteps!’

            In such broad statements, it bears to mention that ‘people’ does not include Terezi Pyrope.

                              

            “You get the deal,” said Dave, leaning against the tree trunk as nonchalantly as he was able to.  Proper nonchalance was an incredibly difficult affectation, he would have you know.  “If she doesn’t find anything, you drop it and start pretending like you’re not insane.”

            “I’m sure you hear this a lot, but _fuck you Strider._ ”  Sollux hissed, flipping him off with both hands.  They were waiting under an orange tree at the edge of the Megido property in the dead of night while Terezi broke into her room and slunk around, searching for clues.  The home was very large, to accommodate the huge family living in it; Aradia had a near infinite number of nearly-identical sisters.  The Megido house was also at the very edge of town, right before civilization gave way to carefully cultivated farmlands. 

            “You can lisp at me all you want,” said Dave, reaching up for an orange, “but it won’t change the fact you’re crazy.”  He peeled the orange and started to eat it.  “This is the best part of living in California,” he said.  “Dead of winter and instead of snow you get oranges.”  He paused after one bite.  “This tastes…angry?” and continued eating it.

            Sollux was preparing to smack the boy, when he heard a sound.  It was humming, in the direction of the graveyard.  Less than fifty yards away was the old cemetery; a proper cemetery with stone angels and huge crypts and pagodas, not like the shiny new cemetery on the other side of town with tiny, sparkly, non-denominational ‘monuments’ instead of big granite headstones with cryptic Fractur writing on them.  Naturally Aradia’s last will and testament (which she had drafted years ago at the age of ten) had made it explicit that she wanted to be buried at the old cemetery and not the horrible new one.  This was officially so she could be near to her family but, she’d confided in Sollux on their second date with a huge smile and a manic gleam in her eye—long before the depression that took hold before her murder (he was sure it was murder it had to have been, people don’t just _drop dead_ ) that the real reason was because…she wanted somewhere cool to haunt.

            The humming continued.  It had a soft and gentle beat, almost like a lullaby.  “Do you hear that?” Sollux asked.

            Dave raised an eyebrow at him.  “Is it the sound of you chickening out of a fight?  I don’t blame you though I’d wipe the floor with you.”

            “Stop pretending like you don’t care about anything,” said Sollux.  “Guys like us are just fucking posers.  Aradia really didn’t care what other people thought of her and she was actually happy for most of her life.”  He stalked off towards the sound.

            Dave rolled his eyes and let him, continuing to eat his orange.

 

            Being blind, there are only two things you can really do, thought Terezi as she rummaged through Aradia’s stuff.  You can either try to get by, or you can _become trained in the ways of the blind samurai_.  She chose the latter path.  It was surprisingly useful for the independent private detective lifestyle.  For example, you could rummage around in a household of 20+ people without making a sound or turning on even a flashlight.  She would be out like a _ghost._

Of course, she couldn’t be a _real_ private detective.  She was only sixteen after all, and anyway the real ones were actually forbidden by law to do most of the awesome stuff for the movies.  But she could put her encyclopedic knowledge of the law and its enforcement to use doing favors for her friends out of the abandoned broom closet on the third floor that the school had lost the keys for, and that was almost as fulfilling, at least until she grew up and either joined the police or started a crime syndicate (she had yet to decide, but that’s what High School is for, she figured).

            Did she think Aradia had been murdered?  There was certainly something excessively suspicious about her death.  Even if they hadn’t been friends, she might have suspected foul play.  Sollux had a few screws loose but he was smart and if he thought there was something off then it certainly set off alarm bells.

            Her hand brushed against something hard and angular.  Ah, the old Ouija board.  It was and expensive, antique piece made of ebony, the edges of which were roughly cut to give the impression of organic-ness.  Aradia had been into that old spooky stuff, and if she’d actually liked dressing in black she might have been classified as a ‘perky goth’ type.  As it stood, she had used the damn thing to make decisions, increasingly so in the days leading up to her death. 

            A memory bubbled to the surface of Terezi’s mind.  Aradia had not simply believed she could communicate with the other side.  She _knew it._   She never gave her any bullshit about psychic readings or traces or spheres or cold spots or general ‘this spirit totally almost kinda contacted me’.  It was always ‘the ghost of this little kid wanted to play baseball with me’ or ‘I don’t like going to the basement because an evil old crone committed suicide in there’ or ‘the wolf they hanged from the orange tree out back keeps trying to bark at me but he can’t, it’s so sad, and I thought they only did that in medieval times?’

            And then one day, a few weeks ago when she’d started getting all distant, “I made a new friend!”  And that was all she said on the matter.

            Terezi sighed in the general direction of the Ouija Board.  She wished that she’d been there for her friend, but then there had been the Egbert-Serket adultery case and that mess had taken weeks to sort out (it turned out they were both just very secretive about Christmas shopping and ended with apologies followed by the sloppiest makeout she had ever had the misfortune of witnessing _right in her closet/office_ ).  By then it was too late, and she’d been found dead on top of a pile of unwrapped candy, the expensive handmade stuff you get at boardwalks and amusement parks.  They’d all been taken away for evidence but—

            A hint of sour apple hit her nose.  She inhaled deeply and followed the scent.  There were hints of cherry, both natural and artificial, food dye Allura Red 40, and excessive amounts of sugar.  Cane sugar.  And…was that a hint of brown?  More things, ingredients she had no name for whatsoever, other than a vague yearning in the pit of her stomach.  The more she smelled the more alluring it became.  A candied apple, but unlike any candied apple she’d ever smelled.  It was delicious, how could _anyone_ have not smelled it?

            It was under the bed and she was in such a hurry to get it that she almost neglected her equipment.  Hastily, Terezi produced a pair of tongs, some gloves, and a heavy duty half-gallon plastic baggy, and fished out the candied apple.

            Terezi was blind.  And yet the apple was so brilliantly red that for an instant she perceived it with all of her senses.  She _almost_ tasted it.

            Then like a splash of cold water her mother’s injunction against eating food off the floor snapped her back to her senses.  It was just an apple.  Really, it was a miracle (or possibly a result of the what-passes-for-winter-in-California chill) that it was just a bit brown…hmm.  She sniffed the apple carefully, taking care not to touch any part of it.  Aradia had taken a big, healthy bite.  She could smell her faint bubblegum toothpaste as well as her underlying, natural scent.  This was the last thing she ate before she died.  _What a way to go_ , she thought, salivating slightly.  Then she sealed it up.

            There was nothing else of value to the investigation in the room except for a notebook that had been labeled ‘diary’ in depressed letering.  Only a few pages of it had been written on, so she decided to nick it and have Dave read it later.  Terezi also decided, on a hunch, to take the Ouija board too, and leapt out the window.

 

            “I found a magic apple and a Ouija Board,” said Terezi as she ran up to Dave.

            “You think she summoned up an evil candy ghost?” he said, popping the last orange wedge into his mouth.

            “They hanged a rabid wolf in that tree,” said Terezi.  Dave shrugged as if he didn’t care while inwardly trying not to wretch.  Terezi ignored the scent of revulsion coming off him.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “There’s definitely at lot more to this case tan we would think.”

            “You’re not,” Dave began, hesitating slightly, “actually suggesting that there might be a supernatural cause?”

            “Depends,” she said with a sharkish smirk.  “Where’s Sollux?”

            “Left,” he said.  “Heard some weird music or something.”

            “That’s not suspicious at all,” said Terezi, voice dripping with sarcasm.

            Dave sighed.  “It was coming from the cemetery.”

            “There is _absolutely no chance_ of supernatural causes now!” Terezi exclaimed happily.  She withdrew her collapsible cane and extended it.  She didn’t _need_ a cane to get around but she was a black-belt in kendo and Canne de Combat.  “To the cemetery!”

 

            Sollux couldn’t believe his eyes.  Standing right in front of him was Aradia.  She was supposed to be dead, but here she was.  Not dead, but _changed._ Her skin was glowing softly pink and her long, silky hair wasn’t black anymore but a weird sort of chocolate-cherry.  There was a candied apple stuck to her head and she didn’t seem to mind or even notice.  Her dress was a dozen shades between deep red and bright pink.  She had a layered skirt that faded from crimson to bright, vanilla white.  Her lips were pulled back in a manic smile, so familiar, but so… _not._

She was humming.  Sollux took a step towards her.

**Author's Note:**

>  _ **CLIFF-HANGER MOTEHRFUCKERS!**_ Merry Christmas/(late) birthday rezi, here’s another present for you and let’s hope that I finish this one in a timely manner! This is the third gift in mitspeiler’s Christmas giftstravaganza and I think I called it that just because I may secretly hate myself.  
>  I may or may not lift parts of the plot from The Faculty, hoping you haven’t seen that movie. Actually I probably don’t care.  
> Fuckin’ Tricksters man, how do they work? They’re kinda like Homestuck’s zombies, but honestly they remind me a bit of classic vampires (rainbow-drinkers are much more like modern vampires) with a hint of alien parasite thrown in for flavor. They’re a creepy fandom created meme that invaded canon and that is just _fantastic_.  
>  This fic was [inspired by this video,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5MN-VwWNuk) and the song Aradia is humming is that one. The visual reference for her trickster mode is [this one.](http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5u342TtoK1r3thx5o1_1280.png) There is lots of good trickster art for Aradia, some of which is far more trickster-y, but since there’s no canon design I felt free to pick and choose. This design was a very popular one that I figured more people would recognize and was just a touch more unsettling than the other brighter ones. As the Trickster threat escalates, we’ll have increasingly more garish designs.


End file.
